Yolk(76)

“Do your goddamned homework!” she commanded, getting right up in my face. “What if she comes back and your grades are even worse?”

I laughed bitterly, drawing myself up tall. “You’re so naive.” I wanted to tell her everything. That our precious mother didn’t love us enough to stay and that she’d given me a ring because I’d caught her. I hated that only I knew of this lopsided bribe and how cruel it was. June loved Mom more than anyone, but Mom didn’t care. She hadn’t left her anything. That’s how much she thought of her firstborn daughter.

“Honestly, I feel sorry for you.” I shoved her off me, glaring. She looked peaked then, small, as if all that piss and vinegar and moral outrage had been drained from her. She was still wearing her ridiculous Hogwarts sweatshirt from school that was stained at the sleeve. It was humiliating enough that she was a social liability on campus, that she telegraphed her obsessions with magic and fantasy for everyone to see. The fact that she couldn’t at least be a realist at home when the truth was excruciating enough to accept was unforgivable.

“She’s not coming back!” I screamed for a second time.

June shoved me and I landed so hard on my ass, I bit the inside of my cheek. I hated her so much, I vibrated with it.

“You are such a fucking traitor,” she shrieked, blocking the door. “You have zero loyalty. You’re so selfish, you make me sick. You don’t deserve to be in this family.”

“Family?” I screeched into the empty house. “Do you see a family anywhere?” Dad was at work, again, desperate to avoid us, leaving us to fend for ourselves with no explanation.

June needed to wake up. “She’s gone. She doesn’t give a shit about us. You could be fucking valedictorian and clean the house spotless and go to church every day and pray your ass off and it still won’t make her come home. She’s gone. She doesn’t care.” Mom didn’t have to say it for me to know. Her voicemail was full. We’d filled it up. And her silence broke my heart.

It had been a month, and I’d moved on. As far as I was concerned, Mom leaving was the best thing that could have happened to me. If she could forget about us, I could sure as shit forget about her first. I’d smoked pot for the first time. I’d stayed out on a school night, drank gin, and puked so hard I’d thought I’d lost hearing.

I summoned all the hauteur in my entire fifteen-year-old body to push past her. I added a snotty head tilt. “I’m going out. It’s not my fault you have no friends. Fucking loser.”

June lunged for me. I kicked her off and swung the door open. As I ran down the drive, sandals slapping at my feet, wind lifting my hair, I felt high. I slipped Mom’s ring onto my finger without looking back.



* * *



The car jerks forward.

“Maybe Mom was sick,” says June. Her face is haloed in a red glow from the brake lights in front. “She looked insane when she came back.”

Mom returned three months later. It was early in the morning. She was drawn and pale and immediately went to take a nap.

“God, Dad was sad.”

“Yeah, that’s why I couldn’t let him go to church by himself.”

In the car ahead of us, the driver reaches for four full bags and two holsters of desserts.

“Who gets food at DQ?” June muses.

We both shake our heads in disgust and drive up.

“Oh, hey,” says June to the cashier. I hear acid in her tone and duck my head low to see what she saw. I recoil quickly, face burning as I feel June’s eyes flick over to me. I recognize him right away when he wouldn’t know me at all.

It’s Holland Hint’s little brother Willy.

With a constellation of acne on his cheeks, he’s lengthened out in the last few years, seemingly as tall as Holland but less filled out from what I could see.

Two years younger than Holland, he wouldn’t know either of us, but I realize I’m holding my breath.

A horrible fear gnaws at my guts that his brother works here too, even though the last time I stalked him, he’d enlisted in the air force. I turn to see if I can spot a beat-up blue Nissan truck in the parking lot. All those memories. Driving around with the radio on, rarely talking, him making me duck whenever he thought we saw someone we knew.

I hear Willy give her the total. June primly unbuttons her wallet clasp and hands him a twenty.

I pull out my compact. I’m oily. And my lips are flaky.

He hands over her change and tells us to drive up to the next window.

June throws the car in drive. I jerk forward when she slams the brakes.

“That’s the brother, isn’t it?” says June, jaw set.

I don’t respond. If anything, I’m surprised that she remembers. I check the rearview, making sure he’s not within earshot, making sure June doesn’t see me checking.

She shakes her head, studying me. “Fuck if these assholes don’t look exactly the same.”

I sense her seething gather steam.

“Why didn’t you say hi?” she hisses.

“June, stop.”

She grabs my compact from me and snaps it shut.

“Do you honestly think he’s about to go call his brother and tell him how you looked?”

I stare at the powder puff in my hand. I wasn’t aware I’d gotten it out.